Hauppauge remote conflict

[merc82]

I recently added a Hauppauge 950Q to my HTPC to go with my Hauppauge 1600. No problem with the actual turners but adding the 950 has caused a problem with my remote control. I've been using the 1600's IR remote receiver for years but adding the 950, which has a built in remote receiver, has caused the 1600's receiver to stop working. In the end I had to remove the 950.

Does anyone know if I could specify to use the 1600 remote receiver?

[sub]

From memory, the Hauppauge IR software always uses the last device installed. You can probably switch it over to the HVR-1600 by moving the HVR-1600 to a different PCI slot, then powering it up (and it'll load the drivers for the new device).

[merc82]

From memory, the Hauppauge IR software always uses the last device installed. You can probably switch it over to the HVR-1600 by moving the HVR-1600 to a different PCI slot, then powering it up (and it'll load the drivers for the new device).

Thanks sub. I'll give that a try.

[Graham]

From memory, the Hauppauge IR software always uses the last device installed.

This might be relevant ... http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...post266869

[merc82]

This might be relevant ... http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...post266869

Thanks Graham, that saved me from disconnecting all those cables from the back of my PC and opening the case. I changed the irport key from 0 to 1, restarted ir.exe, nothing. I then changed the irport key back to 0 from 1, restarted ir.exe, presto!

[merc82]

A late update. As it turns out changing the registry actually only caused the remote to work sometimes. Next I moved the HVR-1600 to a new PCI slot with the 950 still plugged into the same USB port. This worked more reliably for a time until it stopped working altogether. I haven't spent any time trouble-shooting this in days, maybe I'll give it another go on the weekend.

I expect a USB MCE remote receiver would solve all this but they're getting hard to find locally and I'm stubborn to get the setup I've tweaked to my liking over the years to work as I think it should.

[Graham]

I had to change irport and i2ctype to get a result ... but, I was using different devices. The long winded way might be to uninstall both devices (using hcwclear.exe) install one device, check registry values, hcwclear, install other device, check registry values.

http://forums.gbpvr.com/archive/index.php/t-25673.html?
http://forums.gbpvr.com/archive/index.php/t-13866.html?

Good Luck

[merc82]

I changed the i2ctype to 19 (decimal) as recomended in the first link Graham posted on Jan 10. At first it was a bit flakey but it seems to have stabilize. Perhaps the ir receiver had moved. Thanks to Graham.

[merc82]

The conflict reappeared after I unplugged the HVR-950Q (USB device) then reconnected it. Anytime I wanted to use the remote I needed to unplugged the 950, restart the IR remote software then reconnect the 950. Doing this would force the system to use the HVR-1600 IR remote receiver.

The sporadic working of the remote I reported was caused by the remote control's signal sometimes bouncing off a wall to the 950 ir receiver.

Modifying the registry to set the irport and i2ctype wasn't working because the 950 didn't touch those settings. I believe the 950 ir receiver may act as an MCE ir receiver. This wasn't useful to me because the 950 is behind the HTPC and had to stay there.

In the end I wrote a batch script to mimick disconnecting and reconnecting the 950. To use this script you will need to install devcon which can be downloaded from Microsoft.

Code:

@ECHO off
cls
title IR Remote Reset
COLOR 1F
ECHO.
ECHO *******************************
ECHO * Stopping IR Remote receiver *
ECHO *******************************
ECHO.
START "" "C:\program files\WinTV\ir.exe" /QUIT
GOTO WAIT

:WAIT
TIMEOUT 15
GOTO StopServices

:StopServices
ECHO.
ECHO *****************************************
ECHO * Stopping NextPVR and related services *
ECHO *****************************************
ECHO.
START "" taskkill.exe /F /IM NextPVR.exe
ECHO.
net stop "HauppaugeTVserver"
net stop "NPVR Recording Service"
TIMEOUT 5

ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO ***********************************
ECHO * Disabling HVR-950Q USB TV Tuner *
ECHO ***********************************
ECHO.
devcon disable "USB\VID_2040&PID_7200&MI_00"
devcon disable "USB\VID_2040&PID_7200&MI_01"
devcon disable "USB\VID_2040&PID_7200&MI_03"
TIMEOUT 1
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO *********************************
ECHO * Restarting IR Remote receiver *
ECHO *********************************
ECHO.
START "" "C:\Program Files\WinTV\ir.exe" /QUIET
TIMEOUT 4
ECHO.
ECHO *************************************
ECHO * Re-Enabling HVR-950Q USB TV Tuner *
ECHO *************************************
devcon enable "USB\VID_2040&PID_7200&MI_00"
devcon enable "USB\VID_2040&PID_7200&MI_01"
devcon enable "USB\VID_2040&PID_7200&MI_03"
TIMEOUT 1
ECHO.
ECHO.
ECHO ********************************
ECHO * Restarting TV Tuner services *
ECHO ********************************
net stop "HauppaugeTVserver"
net start "NPVR Recording Service"
ECHO.
ECHO *************************************************
ECHO *                                               *
ECHO * IR Remote Control reset to HVR-1600 complete  *
ECHO *                                               *
ECHO *************************************************
TIMEOUT 5
ECHO.
EXIT

The tricky part is ensuring the NPVR Recording Service is stop before the 950 is disabled (notice the 950 has three device identifiers). There are a few ways to do this. In the end I used the :WAIT sequence to put the job to sleep for 15 seconds. This let the NPVR service fully start before I killed it. I could also change the services to start as "Automatic (Delayed Start)" but decided against it as I didn't know if a future release of NextPVR would change this. It's possible the 15 second delay may be insufficient on another machine. Ideally I wanted to include a routine to check the status of the services then wait or kill them but Windows doesn't seem to have this ability.

[merc82]

After having this in place for a day I've noticed a few things.

1. Most importantly the 1600 doesn't keep the remote after resuming from sleep and hibernation. This is odd because when I had the 1600 working before I removed the 950 and started this conflict all over again this wasn't a problem. To resolve this I set up a Task Scheduler to monitor for power resume events and execute the reset script when one occurred.

For resume and thaw events I modified the script to reduce the 15 sleep at the top. I did this because the NPVR recording service wouldn't need to start after a resume so I didn't need the pause before killing it.

2. Another point concerned the 950, I didn't need to specify all three instances, instead I could just use their parent such that the three devcon disable lines are now replaced with the single:

Code:

[FONT=Fixedsys]devcon disable "USB\VID_2040&PID_7200"[/FONT]

Likewise for the devcon enble lines too.

3. The Hauppauge IR Remote program, ir.exe, accepts two options that I know about, /QUIT and /QUIET. If I run ir.exe without either option the program restarts the remote and returns what remote receiver (1600 or 950) is now in use. The problem with this is it will revert to the 950 unless the 950 is disabled. It would be helpful to know if there are other options but ir.exe /? and /HELP return nothing of use.

4. I'm not sure what the purpose of the HauppaugeTVServer service is. I suspect it's needed for WinTV. It doesn't seem to ever be running but I'll continue to have my script kill it so I don't have it fail sometime down the road if it ever is started. I have stopped restarting it however.